Principles Of Selective Inbreeding By W.a Watmough

[asal]

Found this link, no idea about the year of publication

Of particular interest is the Chapter 8, titled Taints

http://web.archive.org/web/20080314202407/http://www.netherworld.com/~cowboy/SelectiveInbreedingMenu.html

and this comment by a bird breeder sums up his experience

Too much to read just now.....so I'll just make a couple of observations....In horses : when done well....it works well....it simply limits the gene pool to either favourable or unfavourable outcomes....or a mixture of both. You need to know your lines well.

In Birds : I bred Colour mutations in Gouldian Finches & Neophema Parrots. Many new colour genes are recessive, thus seemingly pop out of nowhere as nobody keeps pedigrees, except myself......other than a couple of generations. When they do occur, the majority inbreed (Father to daughter, mother to son & brother to sister to give the best chance of breeding the mutation. Alongside that is a major failing in all breeders systems & that is the "Hospital cage" & all sorts of medications for sick birds....I learned early that these birds got sick again, failed to breed or died....very heartbreaking....so I decided to use "natural selection" ( now this is not for the queezy or fanatical "lovers" of all living things), but when I had a sick bird...I euthanased it. Now....guess what....my birds stopped dying, they bred frequently & prolifically into old age......AD this to the inbreeding & we had birds with very poor survival rates & birds that never bred or did so unsuccessfully. This led to the talk that mutations were weak & certain species were weak....what was weak was their management.

Hope that little ramble is of interest."

Edited July 30, 2016 by asal

[Purdie]

Yes interesting.I bred birds for over 30 years and avoided inbreeding them and noted in the breed club i was in others often inbred to the point of birds unable to breed and an increase in Epilepsy.

I wonder if problems such as Epilepsy in dogs is related in any way to breeding closely related dogs.